


Grapes or Cigarettes

by Envoy



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Blood, Canon Era, Canon Related, Canon-Typical Violence, Light Angst, M/M, Quidditch, Sarcasm, Unforgivable Curses (Harry Potter), Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-25
Updated: 2015-03-02
Packaged: 2018-03-15 05:21:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3435074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Envoy/pseuds/Envoy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They've been fighting more recently. As the threat of Voldemort's return to power increases what was once just schoolyard bullying takes on a darker edge. And there's something else going on that Harry might have to confront.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_and nothing would ever come between Lily and the king_

_no nothing ever would_

_except maybe the jack of hearts_

 

 

Ron had his arm around Harry's shoulder, smelling close and sweaty and familiar, woolly, as they and Hermione weaved back across the field. At the edge of the stands, there was a tight yell.

'Eh – Potter.'

Hands shoved in pockets, Malfoy glowered pointedly, chin lifted and mouth set too tight. It was with a sickly heart that Harry walked back to where he stood sentinel, the dribs and drabs of the slytherin team making their way back behind him. Left behind, Malfoy had the same air of bitter dejection. 'What is it Malfoy?' He looked pale and underfed. Oiled hair fell in his face.

'Come back with me?'

Harry suddenly felt very tired. Absently looking over his shoulder, Hermione putting up with Ron's gesturing recapitulations, he found every moment too much. 'I can't- I don't want-'

That stiffness of posture Harry knew. He wondered why looking at the cold eyes that avoided him, the pale thin mouth, they looked now beautiful to him, they shouldn't; bits of numbed glass and enamel debris on the shoreline. Wanted Malfoy to do what he usually did, level some insult. Call his mother a whore. He felt lost, helpless, and an aborted anger.

'… I'm too tired to fight you.'

'No.' Malfoy looked up at him, shook his head. His eyes were open. 'Just, see me in the toilets.'

An empty pause stretched, of reluctance. The darkening air seemed heavy on his shoulders, predetermined, ineluctable. He breathed out, but he wanted to cry. 'Ok. Second floor.' Without waiting or looking, Harry turned and walked back in the opposite direction to Malfoy.

 

 

He made his excuses as they approached the fat lady, veering off to the left while Ron stared at his back nonplussed. A snatch of happy uproar from the common room caught in his chest, making him yearn to be in there with a butter beer not out here stalking cold corridors. Descending the stairway’s dank and empty chill seemed to lower the air pressure and pull his heart down into his boots.

Entering over the bathroom’s floor tiles now had a feeling of uncomfortable familiarity. He felt drained though and sticky with sweat and the low ache of violence it prompted was only an embarrassing physical memory. Malfoy sat waiting on the lip of the sinks in his silver and green, glancing up briefly at his entrance as if caught out, with post match failure in the loose drop of his posture, a bad tempered provocative lethargy. The toilets’ stale aroma of piss seemed almost to be rising off him. Seeing him made that lowdown violence throb faintly. 

‘What is it?’ he found himself asking again, with some cautiousness. There was something else. With dismay he saw that Malfoy’s eyes shone with wetness. The scowl only made him look more ill as he moved in front of Harry. Fuck, he _moved in_. Sensuality. Harry took a step back, feeling moist and grubby.

Impassable disdain curled at the corners of that thin downturned mouth. Harry’s sweaty foreboding opened out then into clarity. He stepped forward again, although Malfoy was hesitating and looking downwards at the tiles. _I don’t want this, I want to be in the warm common room getting pissed and clapped on the back._ Malfoy looked disgusted at his own closeness. He realised coiled sexuality ran through Malfoy’s veins, even at his lowest ebb, making his movements tight and full of grace, that this was something to do with why he was such a good seeker. Clumsy and weary in comparison, Harry allowed him to turn his face with a cold palm and closed his eyes as they kissed.

He wanted to say something nice, _you played well today_ , which was true but he didn’t mean it. ‘Um.’

‘Can it.’

Don’t stop kissing me, he thought. Malfoy leaned back elbows on the sinks with his flat eyes and wet lips; vulnerable, guarded. Harry leaned forward, wanting, for his mouth. Tasting the wet slipping of lips. He melted into the easy tired movements of kissing.

The wand in his pocket bumped against Malfoy, who looked down and back up with a dry smile at his unspoken pun. Harry sort of giggled.

 

                       

 

 

       


	2. Chapter 2

 

He got uproariously drunk that night. A ruddy faced half cut Fred and George waited behind the portrait with contraband whisky and stage whispers, as if the whole house wasn’t already on the juice. Neville was dancing on a table. Harry even accepted a cigarette off a fourth year at some point, enjoying the harsh bite in his throat and getting on famously with the anonymous smoker as they leant from the tower window.

In the early hours he wandered the dormitory like a lost soul. Feeling drunk and turned on, he longed for Malfoy.

Ridiculously, he considered sending him an owl. What on earth would he say? Collapsing on his back on the four poster, he replayed the skin of faces touching, the long minutes, touching the end of his fingers to his lips. This strained and weird kiss and not any others.

 

 

 

Groaning, he stumbled out of bed and past the few roommates still sleeping, taking his bare feet and pyjamas down to the common room where Hermione had a pot of tea waiting. He accepted a mug gratefully from the armchair by the fire.

‘You said you kissed him.’

‘Christ Hermione, you don’t beat about the bush do you.’ Had he said that? What else had he said? He cradled the hot tea, haloed in steam, cursing a growing ache in his temples and avoiding her shrewd glance. She spread the Gazette on her lap, flicking through the back pages.

‘It sounded important Harry.’

‘No, it really isn’t.’ Did he say...?

‘Are you going to tell me who you were kissing?’

Anyone else’s name would be better. Colin Creevey, Fred or George, Uncle Vernon. This was the seriousness of the situation. The tea was dark and bitter, stripping and staining the roof of his mouth. If he told her there'd be no taking it back. Then again, Hermione wasn't the type to let things drop and Harry knew better than to think he could fool her. He felt like he was on the edge of some kind of precipice, and was much too hung-over to deal with the repercussions of stepping off it.

'Alright, but, I mean it when I say it can't leave this room.' He did his best to give her a sharp look, but his eyes smarted and watered at the light. 'Not even Ron. Understand?'

She didn't answer at first, just stared at him.

'Well... Ok, Harry.'

He took a deep breath and started to hesitantly vocalise the bare details, leaving out everything before that night. It got easier after saying Malfoy's name and Hermione not screaming or smacking him. In fact, he felt a sudden need to voice it to himself in narrative to make some kind of sense of things.

'... And then he... y'know... kissed me. We didn't even say anything. I came straight back here.' He got the uncanny feeling Hermione wasn't wholly surprised. 'Look, I don't understand either. Haven't got a clue.'

He swished the dregs of his tea awkwardly, wishing she'd say something. Or praying she wouldn't. 'He was... different. I dunno. Quiet. Weird. Hey...' a hopeful thought had just occurred to him, 'you reckon he was on drugs or something?'

Hermione looked doubtful. She'd folded away her newspaper; a sign of the graveness of the conversation.

'Oh, Harry. I did wonder.'

'You- ? What do you mean? Wondered what?'

'Oh, nothing really. But you're right, it was just after a very important match that you've all been building up to for months, everyone was in a bit of an odd mood.' Harry didn't think _odd mood_ quite covered it. 'And, for goodness sake, you've been at each other's throats since you were eleven, Malfoy knows which buttons to push to get a rise out of you by now.'

He nodded, that made sense. Maybe he was worked up over nothing. He reached over for a piece of Hermione's toast, mentally thanking her for not mentioning Ginny, or the obvious, and mentally thanking Ron for still being in bed.

 

 

 

       


	3. Chapter 3

 

_once again I’m hiding in backwaters_

_running this way and that_

_trying very hard to please_

_rushing to bite the hand that feeds me_

 

 

‘Bring it on you privileged shit.’

Malfoy snarled, ‘Oh I fucking will, Weasley. I'll fucking wreck you. I’ll show you what a fucking shitstorm looks like. You won’t know what’s hit you.’ Anger curled his lips back off his teeth and spat phrases that didn't really suit him, sharp and jarring and slightly ridiculous.

‘You must be joking!’ Ron yelled, ‘you’ve never lifted a finger without your muscle behind you. Get you in a corner and you’d wilt like a rare flower.’ 

Harry was coursing with diffuse and undirected anger. He hardly dared look at Malfoy for it to flare up.

‘Alright. I’ll show you some real violence.’ He was looking at Harry, with – was it? – the ghost of a smile. ‘If you think a feral upbringing play fighting with your pack of inbreds makes you tough, then be my guest.’

An intentionally low blow that even Ron didn’t rise to, shaking his head and turning to go.

‘C’mon,’ Harry agreed, ‘he’s all talk.’

‘He’s such a scumbag.’

Ron continued to mumble unhappily under his breath as they ambled away. Dean gave Malfoy and his cronies a cursory middle finger over his shoulder, and they walked on towards Charms. And that would have been the end of it.

Without warning, white hot pain seared across Harry's back like a whip. Spine seeming to give, he must have crumpled backwards like a split girder. He was on the ground before he registered shouts of fury and struggled up, winded by pain, to see Ron swinging for Malfoy and connecting with his jaw. Hardly noticing the others wrestling with Crabbe and Goyle, Pansy Parkinson getting Dean in a headlock, he saw red, had Malfoy up against the wall. There were teeth, knees in his gut, spit in his face, his hands in Draco’s hair. He lost the advantage, couldn’t move fast enough, and was briefly pinioned before he threw a punch that landed and spun him back around by the shoulders. Blood poured from Malfoy’s lips. There was something wrong with his face; Ron’s punch had been ferocious. Harry panted against his neck; he couldn’t believe he’d used cruciatus.

‘ _Malfoy_ ’ broke out of him, almost a sob. Malfoy sneered in answer, only letting more blood leak between his teeth, gargling something incomprehensible. The smell of him was hot in Harry’s nostrils; faint salt tang, acidity, some kind of fragrance. From his shoulder, Harry’s hand moved across to his neck. ‘Fuck you. Fuck you. Oh- Malfoy.’ He couldn’t help it, his name, the plaintiveness in his voice. His arms were shaking from the effort of pressing a body against the wall.

‘Harry?’ Dean’s voice. With an effort, he turned his head, realising only then. They were all stood looking at them. Even Crabbe and Goyle. Ron was staring at him with a weird expression.

When he let go Malfoy fell forward with a moan, hands on his knees, retching a puddle of blood that hung in a saliva string from his mouth. He’d need hospital attention, but Harry was fucked if he was going to wait around for it.


	4. Chapter 4

_maybe I want to see the wheat fields_

_over Kiev and down to the sea_

He held off and he held off. In the end he was on the way to the library and found himself standing inside the doors of the hospital wing.

Malfoy’s narrow shoulders were propped up on the bedframe. His fingers curled around a yellow glass of squash. Harry lowered himself slowly into the nearby chair. His jaw must have been reset; apart from an excessive pallor he looked normal. They stared away across the room, quiet except for Pomfrey humming in the office at the other end.

‘I hope you’re not here to see me. After clutching me against a wall it does nothing for my reputation.’

‘You used cruciatus.’

Draco turned away on the bed contemptuously.

‘Clear off, you know there are no rules in this game.’

‘What fucking game, Malfoy?’ Harry barked to the back of his shoulders, a long strip of skin revealed where the covers had pulled away. With an effort, he lowered his voice. ‘This is a school, you’re not with the bloody death eaters now.’

‘Look, unless you’re bringing grapes or cigarettes you can leave.’ When Harry made no move to go: ‘... your lot broke two of my ribs, y’know.’

That was why he was undressed under the covers then. Harry tried to quell the slight rising of guilt in his chest by reminding himself what Malfoy had done. He wondered why he’d even been surprised. He thought of Dudley’s mates and the guys on the estates with their blades and Stanley knives in their socks, a place where someone like him couldn’t walk without looking over their shoulder, and this stupid posh boy with a power that they couldn’t dream of. He thought of not only the skill but the intent Malfoy had had to have to wield that, towards him, and felt sick.

He’d turned on to his back again on the bed and was watching Harry carefully. He must have looked green because he felt like he was about to throw up. This boy, with his delicate collarbone now exposed and his breakable ribcage, wishing unimaginable pain on him. That put him in Bellatrix’s league, in the big game. His eyes were so soft, so silver.

‘Potter?’ His hand reached out from under the covers and across to grip Harry’s wrist. It stung and Harry leapt up, knocking the chair over with a bang. He glanced over to check he hadn’t alerted Pomfrey. Malfoy sat up in disarray, duvet pooling around his waist.

What sounded like concern rang in Harry’s head at the same time as he took in the bare curve at the base of his stomach, the dip of his hip. He said the last thing on his mind, the last thing he should have said.

‘I keep waking up with you- thinking about- I-’ There was a horrendous silence and then he fled from the room, from his own stupid mouth, practically ran back through the doors with the fixity of Malfoy’s attentive grey eyes emblazoned on his retinas.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lyrics are from pacifist anthem The Call Up by The Clash


End file.
